The FSFE asks for more Free Software and Open Standards in Open Science

on: 2017-01-05

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls for Free
Software and Open Standards to be considered as a vital part of Open
Science for all publicly-funded research in Europe. You can help us by
sharing our position paper. Read more about the position paper and how
you can promote Free Software in science.

The position paper gives key recommendations for the midterm evaluation
of Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever
with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020).

The results of this consultation will help the European Commission
to set the scene for future discussions on the post-2020 EU research
and innovation funding programmes. The FSFE considers this public consultation
of paramount importance and wishes to put forward its suggestions regarding
Free Software and Open Standards in Horizon2020 or any other EU research
and innovation funding programmes in the future.

In order to safeguard a sustainable future of scientific and technological
innovation in Europe and worldwide, the FSFE makes the following recommendations
to the European Commission:

Open Standards should be preferred for all knowledge exchange,
and in particular for the dissemination of scientific publications and
the archival of all articles, data, and software used in scientific
research. The use of Open Standards in data and software repositories
and Data Management Plans (DMPs) concerning the Horizon 2020 publications, is
necessary to ensure data preservation and Open Science. Research
Funding Organisations should take the lead and foster changes of
business models when dealing with research data.

Software developed with public funding, and in particular in
the framework of the Horizon2020 program should be mandatorily published
under a Free Software licence.

Software developed with public funding, and in particular in the
framework of the Horizon2020 program should be mandatorily archived in
a public software repository ensuring long term availability and persistent identification.

Data and software repositories and Data Management Plans (DMPs)
must employ Free Software in order to ensure unfettered access to their
contents and long term preservation.

Establish "Open Science" Prizes for the promotion of Open Science
and raise awareness among stakeholders.

Software is an integral part of almost every research project, enabling
scientific progress. In Horizon 2020, most of the software used for scientific
research is both acquired and developed in the auspices of public or public-private
funding. Ensuring the accessibility to reuse, study, further develop and
improve the software would be a catalyst for Open Science, fostering
scientific cooperation, improving scientific processes, and benefiting
society as a whole.

A recent decision of EU ministers' provided that by 2020, all scientific
publications on the results of publicly funded research in Europe must
be freely available under Open Access. European Commission expliticly
called free public access to publicly funded research "a vision of the
future" of Open Science not only in Europe, but globally for the year 2030.

Help to spread the word

To find out more about how you can do that, please consult our
wiki page. If your
time is limited, but you still wish to contribute, please check our 5 minutes instructions! Every
and each questionnaire submitted to the consultation makes a difference!

We strongly encourage everyone to take part in the consultation and give weight to more Free Software and
Open Standards in publicly-funded scientific research. The consultation
is open for everyone and runs until 15.01.2017.

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About FSFE

Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology.

Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important
that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software
gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software.
These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of
speech, freedom of press and privacy.